Speech and Performance in Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays [Hardcover]

David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays.David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays. He argues that the la nguage of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive. In a wide-ranging analysis of both the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of plays, Schalkwyk addresses such issues as embodiment and silencing, interiority and theatricality, inequalities of power, status, gender and desire, both in the published poems and on the stage and in the context of the early modern period.David Schalkwyk offers a sustained reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays. He argues that the la nguage of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive. In a wide-ranging analysis of both the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of plays, Schalkwyk addresses such issues as embodiment and silencing, interiority and theatricality, inequalities of power, status, gender and desire, both in the published poems and on the stage and in the context of the early modern period.This analysis of Shakespeare's sonnets in relation to his plays asserts that the language of the sonnets is primarily performative rather than descriptive. It discusses the 1609 quarto of sonnets and the Petrarchan discourses in a selection of plays. David Schalkwyk addresses embodiment and silencing, interiority and theatricality, inequalities of power, status, gender and desire in the published poems, on the stage and in the context of the early modern period.Acknowledgements; Introduction: the sonnets; 1. Performatives: the sonnets, Antony and Cleopatra and As You Like It; 2. Embodiment: the sonnets, Love's Labour's Lost, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night; 3. Interiority: the sonnets, Hamlet and King Lear; 4. Names: the sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida and Othello; 5. Tral-